


from which stars have we fallen--

by ultraviolence



Category: Star Trek, Star Trek: Alternate Original Series (Movies)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Alternate Universe - Coffee Shops & Cafés, Best Friends, Epic Friendship, Fluff, Friendship/Love, Gen, M/M, Male Friendship, Pre-OT3, Romantic Friendship
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-10-21
Updated: 2016-10-21
Packaged: 2018-08-23 18:25:51
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,368
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8338072
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ultraviolence/pseuds/ultraviolence
Summary: --to meet each other here? // It began one October, in the city of San Francisco. But not only October. This is the story of how one Leonard McCoy met one Jim Kirk, fell in love with him, kissed him, and opened a coffee shop with him, not necessarily in that order. This is also the story of how he met an annoyingly cold-blooded Vulcan in said coffee shop. Wasn't that's how things were supposed to be? // Ongoing, part of a drabble series & a collab project. Rated T for some McCoy-esque swearing, general grumpiness, and a kiss. AU.





	

**Author's Note:**

> Title quote from [here](http://wordsnquotes.com/post/152008957393/from-which-stars-have-we-fallen-to-meet-each-other?utm_campaign=SharedPost&utm_medium=Email&utm_source=TumblriOS). I originally intended this to be McSpirk (and I was challenged to write the age-old coffee shop AU), but somehow it turned out to be McKirk with a dash of Spones instead. But since this is only the first of what I planned to be a series of drabbles/fics, one McSpirk is definitely coming up soon. A word of warning: I'm a fic writer, not a Federation historian, nor a barista, or med student, or anything of the sort (also not American), so if I made any mistakes, I'm sorry. I've never been to SF either so...lol. Anyway, obligatory disclaimer, none of Star Trek belonged to me, and I'm not using the brand names I mentioned for any commercial purpose. Please enjoy!

It began one October, in the city of San Francisco.

The so-called explorations to “the final frontier” (as the news outlets had referred to it so vigorously) was reaching its climax, a symphony climbing towards a crescendo. With the Earth slowly but surely began uniting under one flag (“the ascendancy of the United Nations”, as the political scientists loved to call it while they jostled and jousted in popular media channels), and with famine, war, and disease partly eradicated, humanity suddenly had all the time (and the _money_ , he scoffed, the money that they could probably use for something else—like funding med schools, perhaps) in the world to devote almost all their time to the most expensive past time that scientists (“astrophysicists”, now that’s something funny—what do stars need scientists _for_? They can fend for their own quite alright) can dream of. It’s only the stuff of old time movies and television dramas in the past century or so, yet becoming a reality in the era he lived in.

Freshly graduated from medical school, Leonard McCoy had wandered into San Francisco by accident (if not sleepwalking). He had never planned to move outside the state of his birth, not now, not _ever_ , and if he were to move, it should still be somewhere within the confines of said state, but his then-girlfriend and future wife had a different plan in mind for him. Fate, it seems, was telling McCoy to move, despite his insistence to stay put, the entire world—no, the entire _galaxy_ —be damned. 

Three years later, the girl had left him, citing that she needs time. Two years before that, he proposed to her—nervously, with a lot of liquid courage the night before—and she accepted. A year before, and they moved in to San Francisco together. She loved the Golden Gate Bridge, although it wasn’t something she admitted readily to anyone (“It makes me sound like a tourist,” she told him, laughing, wind in her hair), and she wanted to live somewhere bigger, as if the expansion of space somehow would offer her more chance at happiness, that elusive game of chance. Maybe it does, and she took it. She left him after all, and the last he heard from her was an update in her Facebook page that proclaimed a new job. NASA. Or whatever it was called now.

He still missed her laugh, and the way she tucked her hair whenever she was about to tell him somewhere important. McCoy would say that he wasn’t bitter about it, that he wished her all the best of luck with her space exploration agency, but angels be damned, he _was_ bitter. At least she left him an entire damned _planet_. And a city full of memories. He would be lying if he said that he wasn't drinking more after she left him, and after he heard the news of her new job.

So he drank—for a life that he would never get to share with her—and moved on.

* * *

It began one October, in the city of San Francisco.

It gets so damned cold sometimes, McCoy doesn’t know why. He was only very recently unemployed, when the hospital he worked in—had worked in for the past year or so—make some budget cuts, and as he is not yet a specialist, not yet _anything_ other than recent graduate, he didn’t make the cut. They apologised profusely and gave him some extra cents with his last check, but unemployment is unemployment. And thus, this is how he ended up with a newspaper and a hot cup of coffee, minding his own business in the street, when a guy bumped into him, making him drop his newspaper and spilled all his coffee in the process. He scowled greatly at this man.

“Watch where you’re going, son,” McCoy told him, accidentally deploying all of his native accent behind the words, possibly due to his flash of annoyance—that was a good waste of money, and he’s hanging on to every cent until he can get another job—and despite the fact that the other man was only a couple of years younger than him. 

To his surprise, the blond guy (with annoyingly good looks, he noted, getting even more infuriated for some reason) smiled and hold up his hands in a gesture of goodwill. “Sorry, sorry,” he told McCoy, smiling disarmingly (McCoy could feel himself relaxing visibly despite his initial annoyance, much to his chagrin), glancing at the other’s spilled cup of coffee and his ruined newspaper. 

“Can I get you another one? There’s a Starbucks just around the corner, we could go there real quick.” 

“This ain’t Starbucks, kid,” he told him, gruffly, but something in him loosened at the offer. Despite his initial reluctance, he accepted.

“I’m Jim,” the younger man told him, as they walked around the corner. “Jim Kirk.”

* * *

It began one October, in the city of San Francisco.

It was now the beginning of April, spring making her slow but sure progress, waking up the city and its people. First contact has been established—or rather, first contact came to _them_ —with the planet Vulcan and its people. Bones (a morbid yet ironic nickname Jim stuck on him and which, over time, gets stuck and can’t be unstuck) watched it live on TV, shrugged it off, and moved on, as he does with most things about space. That would give Gina—his ex—something to do, at least, he thought to himself, not bitterly. However, his best friend—although he loathed to admit it out loud, least of all to the person in question, because he’ll get so obnoxious about it, no doubt—gets so excited over it, Bones almost took pity on him. Jim somehow managed to get Bones to watch the (recorded) proceedings with him, for the umpteenth time, from the time the Vulcan delegation first landed, until they entered the White House for the first time. He asked too many questions, in Bones’ own opinion, like a child overexcited and on sugar high, past his bed time: How many Vulcans are there? What are they like? What are they _really_ like? Do they eat like humans do? Do they—a small gasp— _kill_? How did their spacecraft really looked like? What do we do _now_? 

But what fascinates—and equally terrified—Bones is when the camera gave a close-up shot of the delegation. It’s not the delegation themselves—they were rather unremarkable, in Bones’ opinion, despite their pointy ears and hair that looked like it came out straight from a Beatle’s wet dream—it’s his friend’s reaction _towards_ them. 

“Bones,” Jim said suddenly, his voice uncharacteristically soft. “Bones, I got an odd feeling.”

“If it’s about whether or not their physiology is compatible with humans, I’d suggest you’d take it elsewhere.” 

“No!,” he exclaimed suddenly, pulling himself up from a flop in Bones’ couch. “Not that! See, I was looking at that—“ he gestures at the TV expansively, “—and suddenly I had this oddest feeling, like we were meant to know them all along. That we’re going in the right direction, you know?”

“You mean you would rather meet those pointy-eared bastards than actual little green men from Mars? Jim, you’re _hopeless_.”

The insulted man threw a cushion in Bones’ general direction, which managed to hit his face. Bones scowled at him, but, much to his annoyance, Jim wasn’t looking at him anymore. His friend was intent on watching the recording currently transpiring on the TV screen, as if searching for something. 

As if _expecting_ something. Or some _one_. The good doctor-in-training threw the cushion back at the other, but Jim batted it aside, still transfixed by what had happened.

Bones felt a chill—whatever Jim was feeling, he felt it too—but he, uncharacteristically for _him_ , doesn’t let it faze him. He took a sip of his iced tea—that was mostly water at this point—and leaned back, trying his best to be (and sound) casual.

“Jim, if you’re _that_ interested in those aliens, you should probably marry one of them.”

His friend finally looked up—the blank, engrossed look on his face was gone, much to Bones’ relief—and smiled, perfectly himself again. “Maybe,” he mused, faking a serious look. “If I get to know one of them.” 

Then he grinned, tossing the cushion (which until a moment ago was lying on the floor) back to Bones. “And I get the feeling that I would. Don’t you, Bones?”

“As much as I hated to admit it, I do.”

* * *

It began one October, in the city of San Francisco.

A year turned into another, and Bones found himself on another cold October day, only a couple of blocks away from where he had first met his friend. It had been a long day for them—a long week for _him_ —and he was beginning to feel it in his bones. His medical training all pointed out to this common diagnosis: he needed rest. Lots of it. But they were not done for the day—Kirk said that there was one more place they absolutely needed to take a look at. He was so damned _tired_. Sometimes he doesn’t know how he managed to keep up with Jim Kirk, or how he was talked into co-owning a coffee shop with him. It all doesn’t add up. But Leonard McCoy was nothing if not faithful.

Since his body was protesting, he doesn’t really pay attention to where they were going anymore, and felt a mild surprise when they reached their destination. 

“What’re we doing here, Jim? It’s past closing time.”

“Relax, Bones.” He gave him the smile he knew so well, the smile that basically conveys that _everything will be all right_ , _I got it covered_ , and held up his hands in the same gesture that he’d shown him when they first met, a couple of years ago (was it? Bones thought to himself. Time flew by so fast…). “My friend worked here. She gave us the pass.”

“Lisa, wasn’t it?” The doctor-in-training matched his friend’s pace, eyeing him inquisitively. “The girl you were sleeping with?"

Kirk winced, as if Bones had run him through with some invisible lance. Well, not that dramatic, but point still stands. “I’ve broke up with her, actually. It doesn’t work out.”

Bones let out a long sigh, as Kirk reproduced a keycard—Bones looked the other way, in case it was illegal, which, in Jim’s case, he’s pretty sure it _was_ —and opened the back door for them. The darkened service corridor greeted them, shadows dancing discreetly in the after hours, while the stories of that day sang themselves to sleep in order to join the building’s memory (buildings _have_ memory, that’s what his Nana taught him). 

“It’s always the case with you, isn’t it?” He asked his friend, not unkindly. “It never worked out.”

Kirk gave him a look. “I didn’t bring you here to discuss my love life, Bones. You’re a doctor, not a shrink.”

That being said, he strode forward, boldly, into the dark corridor, leaving the doctor-in-training gaping and scowling, and eventually scurrying after him. “A doctor _in training_ ,” he grumbled under his breath. “Didn’t have the money and the means to be one _yet_.” 

His friend wasn’t paying attention to him, not any longer. The dark corridor has demanded his silence— _their_ silence—and they gave it what was due, as they walked, nearly shoulder to shoulder, through it, the dark hushing them both like a commanding mother. Then they reached another door at the end of the hallway, which Kirk opened with the same keycard, and which gave way. 

They were at last at the dome-shaped room, the heart of the silent planetarium. He glanced, instinctively, around them, his eyes already adjusting to the darkness. He could practically hear his heart beating faster—in the silence, it sounded thunderous to him—and not because of the darkness or because they were alone in the dark, either. Ghosts doesn’t scare him, not Leonard McCoy.

“Well, Jim?” He inquired, his voice thankfully retaining his natural gruffness and none of the anxiety he suddenly felt. “What are we waiting for, the Vulcans?”

“Close, but not that,” Kirk grinned again, triumphantly. Bones then knew, for certain, that the little shit had been planning this all along. Damned cocky bastard. “Why don’t you take a seat? Our show’s gonna start in a bit.”

“I should never let you talk me into anything,” he grumbled, as he took a seat in the middle row. Kirk followed suit and sat beside him, hands in his jacket pocket.

True to his friend’s word, the planetarium suddenly exploded in a burst of colour and light—and then they were in space. A very convincing projection of it, at least.

“Welcome to the final frontier,” Kirk said with a shit-eating grin. Bones felt the sudden need to punch that grin out of his face. 

“Damn it, man, are you saying that you staged all this? How long have you been planning this?” He leaned closer, conspiratorially, his tone every bit of that of an interrogator. Although he was playing along—and he had been, what a _fool_ he was—he was definitely not letting Jim Kirk getting away with this.

“Shh, you’re ruining the show. We can talk later, focus on what’s happening. Bones, we’re in _space_!” Kirk exclaimed, excitedly, the cow who got the cream. Or, more like, the cow who got himself a damned spaceship. Never mind that it’s fake. Or that a cow can’t really do anything with a spaceship. Or that space is definitely going to _kill it_.

“Space,” he started, almost dramatically, “is disease, danger, darkness, _and_ death. We’re not meant for space. We can’t breathe in that _damned_ void. We’re going to _die_ there, Jim, that’s what.”

“I know, I know, you said the same thing every time!” The other man clapped Bones on the back, laughing in the meanwhile. They were now moving through space, through the known solar system, the doctor-in-training noticed. “That was the first thing you said to me when we first talked about space. Remember? I told you about how I would like to join the NASA someday and—“

“Yes, yes, I get it. And I would keep saying it until the day we die. You better remember it, Jim.”

“I would, Bones.” His friend told him, and a self-satisfied smile spread over his face. At that moment, Leonard McCoy, also known to his friends as Bones, realised something. No, he realised _two_ things. 

“You didn’t drag me all the way here to talk about that, did you?” 

Despite Bones’ obvious tone of suspicion, Kirk just laughed, good-naturedly. They were racing past Jupiter now, the giant planet receding from view in what he reckoned as subwarp speed (another thing that rubbed off on him from Jim— _he_ was a huge science fiction fan). They were due to reach Saturn soon. 

“You’re not a psychic either, Bones. But you’d make a pretty fine one if you ever want to try your hands on the profession.”

“Cut the horseshit, Kirk. You brought me here to talk about something, and since you said that we’re not here to talk about _your_ love life, that only left us with _mine_. You’re here to pooh pooh me into talking about my breakup with Jen, aren’t you?”

He gave his friend the force of his full, McCoy-esque glare, pointing a finger accusingly at him while Saturn pans into view, its magnificent rings glittering, a panorama from another world. _Of_ another world. Despite the glorious view, James Tiberius Kirk turned his face towards him, smiling a wry smile. Bones thought briefly that it was an even more glorious view than the giant ringed planet. 

“Well, now that you mentioned it,” his smile turned coy, teasing. “Brilliant deduction, Sherlock. That’s not quite it, though.”

“Then what?” Bones blurted out, genuinely baffled (and more than distracted by the view, but not Saturn, he thought to himself, _not space_ ). “Jim, you can’t possibly drag me all the way out here, lying to me, _come on, Bones, there’s only one more place we need to take a look at for today, I promise_ ,” he paused, noting the amusement in his friend’s expression at his attempt to mimic his earlier pleading tone, “—only to show me all these damned planets that I’ve seen before. So there’s something else that you haven’t told me.”

“Well,” Kirk started, rather petulantly, like a child caught red-handed, “I was actually trying to cheer you up. I know Jen means a lot to you.”

“So did Gina. Look where that left me.”

“Bones,” the other man started again, and Bones was about to stop him—what right does Kirk have, butting into his _personal business_?—yet he bit his tongue. The other man looked as if he was on the verge of disclosing something important, something life-changing. “Bones, Bones…hear me out first. It’s not the end of the world. I brought you here because I wanted you to appreciate just how _vast_ the Universe is. It’s practically _endless_.”

There was quite a notable amount of pause afterwards, as they raced past cold Uranus. Bones sensed that, whatever it is that Jim was about to say next, it wasn’t something he told just about anyone. 

“When…when my dad died because of an accident in his ‘craft, on Earth’s orbit…I thought it was the end of the world. I didn’t know him that well, I was, what, six, seven, at that time, but I was so fucking sad. I cried my eyes out,” he quickly added, and glanced at Bones, sheepishly, looking positively relieved when he found that the other was staring at him expectantly (and sympathetically), waiting for him to continue. “I didn’t want to eat anything. My mum was out of the country.”

Neptune came into view, and just as quickly disappeared. Bones somehow wished that this moment, this night, would never end.

“My brother…well, he gave me this book. It was about space, and its brave explorers. Somehow, it managed to cheer me up. It opened my eyes. Makes me feel…well, less _sad_. There’s all this space out there, waiting to be explored. It’s vaster than what I feel, at that time.”

Silence fell once more between them, as they zoomed out past Pluto, into the unknown. Into a place where no man has gone before. Possibly a place that contained new life, new civilisations…strange new worlds that was nothing like the one they know. But just as possibly, and to Bones, _certainly_ , contained new diseases and plagues and bacterias that no one can cure just yet. 

It occurs to him, however, that at least for the time being, he doesn’t mind it _that_ much. Not when Jim Kirk was right there beside him.

“Jim, I wanted to say…thank you.” He said, finally, breaking the silence. He gave the other a reassuring pat on the shoulder as acknowledgement of what he just shared with him, and a brief side-hug that lasted for about 0.5 seconds (he pulled away before his friend can get too touchy-feely). “But never mention it, or pull anything like this ever again, or I’ll show you just how fast I can put you in a hospital.”

His friend flashed another smile, a genuine one without any trace of self-satisfaction or cockiness. Bones thought it looked rather good on him. “No prob, Bones. Now if you’d let us focus on the show…”

“Not in a million lightyears.”

“Hey, you’re using it all _wrong_ —“

Bones didn’t hear him anymore—the world has narrowed down to this moment, this single moment between him and the other, surrounded by stars millions of lightyears away, dead ghost lights from another universe, and for a moment he felt as if he was standing on a precipice—and before he thought about it too much, impulse took over, the same impulse which drives Kirk closer, too, and between all those stars, all those unknown variables and unblinking, knowing lights, their lips met.

It was—how’d the guy he was kissing would say this— _out of this world_ , to say at the least. And he tasted just like how Bones always imagined him to be—and he could swear it, although this is completely ridiculous on so many levels and doesn’t make any sense at all—stardust, and the memory of clear summer nights back on his hometown, when he could see the stars. 

In another words, it was completely wonderful, and also mindblowing. Bones could feel his cheeks reddened after they broke off. It makes him feel like an adolescent again, strange and terrifying and wondrous. 

The little shit, on the other hand, was openly laughing _at_ him. 

“You really have no sense of self-preservation, aren’t you?” He told him, grumpily, still having the grace to be abashed. Still having the sense to not look him directly in the eyes, although he could feel the other’s eyes on him. Damned little bastard.

Kirk just smiled. “You could nurse me back to health as fast as you can put me in the hospital, Bones, I’m sure of it. And also, I get the sense that this partnership will be totally _awesome_.”

“Fuck off.” Bones muttered hotly, his cheeks burning, his exhaustion had mysteriously vanished, somewhere between Pluto and the edge of the unknown. He was standing on a precipice—and he took the plunge. He felt a strange exhilaration washed over him.

And as they shot past more frozen planetoids and strange celestial objects, Leonard McCoy reflected on his second realisation earlier: that he was in love, and still is, with his friend. 

Wasn’t that’s how things were supposed to be?

* * *

It began one October, in the city of San Francisco.

Contact with Vulcan was intensifying, and they could see the alien visitors all over the Earth, helping to solve humanity’s still lingering, endemic problems, and at the same time learning, learning, always learning. Humanity learnt a lot, too, and the first interplanetary Academy—of the United Federation of _Planets,_ plural—was to be open, soon, in their city, across the Bridge. Bones wasn’t really looking forward to it, not really, he cared more about what’s happening in his little coffee shop, the _Warp Factor Eight_ —well, his and Jim’s, technically—but his friend (and, well, _more than friend_ , although boyfriend wasn’t really it, since their relationship remained pretty much unchanged after the kiss, which is something Bones was grateful about) and business partner was practically on cloud nine when he heard the news.

That morning—February now, a couple of months after the planetarium incident—they got their first Vulcan customer. It was a quiet Sunday morning, not a lot of customers around, and Bones was on shift duty. Kirk was in the back room—his shift isn’t until after lunch, when they switch places and prepare for busier hours as the day waned—probably reading or listening to music (he could never understand that man’s taste in music) or both. Kiran, the other barista who was supposedly on shift duty with him, told him that she would be late, since she was feeling under the weather.

“I’ll have one, black.”

The voice was oddly flat, voicing his order with an equally odd—but not exactly out of place in San Fransisco—inflection. He was probably his third, fourth, customer of the day. There was a father and his daughter, a businesswoman, and a youngish guy preceding this one. No doubt about it, business was slow that morning. Bones didn’t even look up at the owner of the voice, as he punched stuff into the old-fashioned cash register.

“One…what? Espresso? Cappuccino? Americano?” He asked him, looking at the owner of the voice for the first time. He was only a little bit shocked at seeing the guy’s _ears_ —one of those pointy-eared bastards, finally, he thought to himself, almost resigned at the fact—but even more shocked at how said customer processed this simple question. For one, he actually treated this as if it was a serious, matter-of-life-and-death question, tilting his odd-shaped head slightly to a side, a completely serious expression on his face. Bones had almost pitied him for a moment. 

“Look, since you wanted it black, I can give you an espresso. How about that?” He finally took pity for real, seeing as how the man—the Vulcan—just stood there, looking at the menu with an impassive but obviously confounded expression. Thankfully there wasn’t any more customers behind him in the line.

“That,” the Vulcan remarked, carefully enunciating his words, like a computer learning how to speak for the first time, “would be most logical. I’ll take that.”

Bones was undoubtedly puzzled at this odd choice of words—and he had dealt with odd customers during his tenure in the shop before, but this was surely the oddest of the lot—but nodded and completed the Vulcan’s order, finishing the input and preparing the coffee.

“You know,” he said, conversationally, “logical is not the way I’d have put it.”

“Oh?” His customer said in turn, somehow managed to sound inquisitive, despite his (naturally, Bones suspected) flat tone of voice. “How would you have…put it, as you say?”

“Well,” Bones placed the espresso in front of the other, looking him in the eyes. “Coffee isn’t logical. You either like it or you don’t. You either put sugar in it, or you don’t. It’s a matter of preference, not logic.” 

The Vulcan now looked thoughtful, at least for a moment. Then, with an eyebrow raised, he simply remarked, with the air of a computer churning a new piece of information: “Fascinating.”

And he left with his coffee, in his damned grey coat and his odd way of tying a scarf, his stupid pointy ears sticking up prominently from the sides of his face, leaving Bones even more puzzled than before. He ran a finger through his hair, and muttered to himself:

“My god, Jim isn’t going to believe _this_.”

**Author's Note:**

> He's a barista, not a xenobiologist. Vulcanologist...? I'd like to think of this as one of the alternate universes (infinite possibilities in infinite combinations and all that) in Trek canon, which is why Kirk said that he got the feeling that they were meant to go to this direction (w/ Vulcan and stuff), and Bones thought that this was how things were meant to be. Universal constants, if you'd like. I'd also like to think that the setting of this AU is somewhere in the 22nd century, not 23rd like the Prime timeline and the movies. Don't kill me, I took full Artistic License with this (and everything else on this fic, basically). Also, to wrap this up, comments & suggestions welcome! Thanks for reading.


End file.
